Posted by Eliza on September 27, 2010

Many of you are already subscribers to BookPageXTRA, the most popular of our three e-newsletters—today, we're inviting you to be contributors as well. For those not in the know, XTRA comes out twice a month and includes previews of the print edition of BookPage, exclusive reviews and interviews, editors' picks and lots and lots of book recommendations. We also give away books in each issue. Here's a sample of the most recent edition.

Next week's XTRA is all about social media—and how BookPage communicates with booklovers and spreads the word about new books through this blog, Facebook, Twitter and more. Of course, we have our own ideas about how all this works, but we'd love to share yours as well. To contribute, just answer any or all of the questions below in the comments.

Why do you like reading book blogs?

What books or authors have you discovered from book blogs, Facebook fan pages, etc.?

Have you connected with other readers thanks to book blogs? Why are these relationships important to you?

We will choose several comments for inclusion in the newsletter (and we'll only include your first name).

Posted by Eliza on October 14, 2009

I was amazed by all the feedback on our “Book Blogs We Love” post. I think I’m going to have to give up book reading to focus on book blog reading. (Just kidding – never!) But seriously: How do all you blog readers keep up with the massive content out there? RSS feed? Ridiculously organized toolbar?

There were many more wonderful blogs mentioned in the comments to yesterday’s post, but here are a couple more that caught my attention:

S. Krishna’s Books deserves a shout out for the incredible amount of content on the site. Goodness I was blown away. S. Krishna is pursuing her Master’s degree in D.C. – and she has still reviewed 351 books this year! I especially appreciated the handy post on navigating the world of online bookswapping. There are also giveaways, which many of you know we love at BookPage. (See Vampire post below.)

Posted by Eliza on October 13, 2009

You may recall that a few weeks back I made a commitment to start compiling a new blogroll for The Book Case. I thought this would be a fun and easy way to acquaint myself with the book blogging community.

That was before I realized how many book blogs there are. Holy moly. You know how sometimes Time magazine or Newsweek will release a list of the 100 best books of all time? (Or 1001!) Those lists drive me crazy, particularly when I start to tally up how many (i.e., how few) of the books I’ve actually read (and when I remember that I still haven’t read Catch-22). Well, that’s how I felt when I started perusing book blogs. It’s not uncommon for a book blog to feature a blogroll with over 50 blogs, to review new books every day (and these are recreational bloggers, presumably with other full-time jobs and responsibilities), and to receive over 20 comments per post. Figuring out how to navigate this large and active community is a daunting task… but here at The Book Case we’re going to make an earnest effort to try.

As part of an ongoing series, we offer part 1 of “Book Blogs We Love.” In each installation, we’ll give an overview of a few awesome book blogs.

Readers, please give us suggestions!

The Book Lady’s Blog is written by Rebecca, a book seller (and soon-to-be marketing coordinator for a medical company). Recent content includes a guest post from Allison Hoover Bartlett, author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, and a diatribe on the self-indulgence of Nicholas Sparks. I also enjoyed the review (with lots of great excerpts) of Michael Chabon’s latest, Manhood for Amateurs.

Technical writer Ti writesBook Chatter. My favorite thing about this blog is the format of reviews, each of which include a blurb from the book’s publisher, a short summary (“the short of it”), and a longer reflection (“the rest of it”). Recent reviews include Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Francine Prose’s Goldengrove.

Erin, who works at a public library, writes A Life in Books. The blog is basically Erin’s reading diary, which I love because of the variety of coverage. At BookPage, we write about what’s being published right now, and it’s refreshing to read about books that have been out for a while (like Hilma Wolitzer’s Summer Reading, which Erin found in a bargain bin at Border’s!). I also like this blog for the conversational tone of its reviews.

Finally, I'll admit that I was inspired to get going on this blog-finding project by Nina Sankovitch, whom I discovered in the New York Times. Nina reads a book a day and writes reviews on her website. At BookPage, we were pretty wowed by Nina's story. I figured that if she can read a book a day, then I can pump up my blog reading.